The recent Pirate Bay case was so significant that the verdict made it onto the mainstream news, and it has been interesting talking to people who are not computer experts about their feelings on the matter. There are two options that seem to be presented by people on the different sides of the debate: either all musicians and film makers go out of business because infringement is unstoppable, or the whole Internet has to be shut down because all online services are illegal. Although rather extreme views, I think this dichotomy reflects the very difficult decision that the court had to make, and looking at the verdict, I think that in particular the judge walked a very narrow line. I have heard some very weird arguments such as “The site had the word ‘pirate’ in the name, therefore they must be guilty as accomplices to copyright infringement” but fortunately the case does not seem to have hinged on this. From my layperson’s perspective, though, the verdict did seem to involve some surprising legal reasoning, and I would like to present to you some points from it which could form the basis of an appeal, as well as some points where the law might unintuitively agree with the prosecution.
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